US intelligence official: You get privacy when your definition matches ours

Donald Kerr, a top intelligence official with the US government, says that citizens need to change their definition of privacy to match the government's definition, the AP reports. Appointed Director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in 2005, Kerr is now the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Kerr is one of many in the intelligence community who finds Americans' views on privacy to be antiquated and unreasonable.

Kerr echoes the view that privacy is not synonymous with anonymity. Americans who want to see anonymity at the center of privacy policies need to give up this notion, he says. "Too often, privacy has been equated with anonymity; and it's an idea that is deeply rooted in American culture... but in our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity - or the appearance of anonymity - is quickly becoming a thing of the past," Kerr said according to a PDF transcript of his comments.

Americans need to shift their definition of privacy to center instead on the proper maintenance and protection of personal data by government and business entities. Kerr said that "privacy, I would offer, is a system of laws, rules, and customs with an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards on which our intelligence community commitment is based and measured. And it is that framework that we need to grow and nourish and adjust as our cultures change."

Kerr also tackled the "common thinking that, in order to have more safety, you get less privacy." Kerr argues that "you need to have both... You can be perfectly safe in a prison; but you certainly aren't free. And you can be perfectly free in an anarchist society; but you certainly aren't safe."

The problem, according to Kerr's line of thought, isn't that government and businesses may have intricately detailed information about citizens, or that they might be actively working to collect such data as part of an extensive program of electronic surveillance. The concerns, Kerr says, should be focused on how such data is safeguarded and how Americans view the importance of that data.

Kerr's comments come at a time when the US government is trying to address objections over the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act. In particular, the question is whether or not telecommunications companies deserve immunity for their involvement in illegal wiretapping beginning in 2001. Kerr seems to be saying, hey guys, what they did isn't bad at all, you should be impressed how secret it all was, really.

Proponents of increased surveillance, like Kerr, have high estimations of the government's ability to safeguard sensitive data, though the sentiment is not shared by all. It's hard to have too much confidence when the FBI is busy losing laptops and the nature of such programs appears to be one involving little oversight from independent branches of government.

It's cliché, but Benjamin Franklin long ago warned against rhetoric that demands trading individual rights for corporate security. Asking Americans to greenlight extensive, unchecked electronic surveillance by changing their very definition of privacy is a prime example of such rhetoric.

Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said "It's just another 'trust us, we're the government'" argument.

Ken Fisher / Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation.